Mountain Landscape at Sunset 1939

Werner Peiner made this landscape painting at sunset with oils, though it's undated. There's a real stillness to it, a hushed quality in the way the colors bleed together. It’s interesting how Peiner uses smooth gradients to create the scene, building up the colors like layers of sediment. The sky, especially, is like a watercolor wash, the oranges and reds melting into each other. It’s really about atmosphere. Then there’s the surface of the water, reflecting the sky, kind of flattening everything into one plane, dissolving the distinction between earth and sky. But it's not just about pretty colors. Look at the rocks in the foreground. They’re almost monumental, like abstract sculptures. The way the light catches them, it’s as if they're glowing from within. It reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich, that same sense of awe and maybe even a little bit of melancholy. Both artists explore our place in the world, and I think they invite us to contemplate the sublime, which is not so bad.